William B. Davis (zoologist)

William Bennoni "Doc" Davis (born March 14, 1902 in Rexburg , Idaho , † June 19, 1995 in Bryan , Texas ) was an American zoologist . His main research interests were mammalogy and herpetology .

Life

Davis was the son of Bennoni Washington and Mary Ann Matilda Davis, née Owens. His father and grandfather ran a sawmill east of Rexburg, a small agribusiness and lumbering community on the Snake River about 50 miles southwest of Yellowstone National Park . When Davis was three years old, his father was killed in a sawmill accident. His mother was a skilled cook, so she managed to support the family by cooking for miners in northern Utah for two years . In 1907 she found a job as a cook at a new boarding house and hotel in Rupert , Idaho, a small community on the north side of the Snake River. Davis completed his entire elementary and middle school education there, graduating in February 1920.

At the time, Idaho jurisdiction allowed high school graduates to qualify for a teaching diploma after completing two summer school courses at a regular college. Davis had a job in agriculture that he was dissatisfied with. So he followed his fiancée's suggestion and qualified for a third-grade teaching diploma. In the fall of 1920, he began teaching at a rural school near St. Anthony, Idaho. Over the next 13 years, he alternated between attending summer school and teaching at elementary schools in Idaho, Washington, and California. In April 1923 he married Pearl Kathryn Tansey. From this marriage a son and a daughter were born. In 1984 his first wife died and in 1985 Davis remarried.

In 1932 Davis enrolled at Chico State College , California, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in education in 1933 . He had developed a professional interest in ornithology even before entering college . His first article appeared in 1923, and after graduating from Chico State College, he had published 10 technical papers, all but one of which dealt with birdwatching he had taught in the course of his teaching career. His association with the University of California at Berkeley began in the summer of 1933 when he was working with Robert Thomas Orr as a field assistant for Eugene Raymond Hall in Nevada . After Davis shifted his research to the field of mammals, Joseph Grinnell took over the leadership of the graduate committee. For the next four summers, he led a long-term study in Idaho , collecting mammals across the state while supporting himself by working as a research assistant in the Department of Zoology. In 1936 he graduated with a Master of Science degree. His dissertation, The Recent Mammals of Idaho , was published in 1939, two years after earning a Ph.D. received his doctorate. At this point he had published another 26 writings, mostly based on work during his doctoral studies. In 1937 he accepted a professorship in the Department of Wildlife Science at Texas A&M University . In 1938 he became a curator of the Texas Cooperative Wildlife Collection (TCWC), a position he held until 1967. Under his direction, the TCWC became one of the 15 largest collections of mammals in the United States and the largest in Texas. Davis was director of the wildlife and fisheries department at Texas A&M University from 1947 to 1965.

During his academic career, he supervised the master's and doctoral theses of 31 students, including Bryan P. Glass , Wendell G. Swank , James Ray Dixon , Dilford C. Carter and Paul W. Parmalee . After resigning from the administration, he received the Governor's Award for outstanding service in conservation education. In 1934 Davis became a member of the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM). From 1937 to 1940 worked there as a correspondent secretary. In 1955 he was elected President of the ASM and re-elected in 1956 and 1957. In 1968 he was elected an honorary member. Davis continued to work in research after his retirement in 1967. Between 1923 and 1994 he published 191 scientific articles. Lack of eyesight eventually forced him to limit his scientific activities.

Davis described among others, the Strecker gopher ( Geomys streckeri ), the bat species Lophostoma evotis , Sturnira luisi , Artibeus inopinatus and Uroderma magnirostrum that anolis Anolis microlepidotus , Anolis omiltemanus and Anolis subocularis , the reticulated desert Gecko ( Coleonyx reticulatus ) and the frog Eleutherodactylus dilatus .

Dedication names

The taxa Uroderma bilobatum davisi , Dasypus novemcinctus davisi , Eutamias obscurus davisi and Phyllodactylus davisi are named after Davis .

literature

• David J. Schmidly, James R. Dixon: Obituary of William B. “Doc” Davis. Journal of Mammalogy 79 (3), 1998, pp. 1076-1083
• Elmer C. Birney, Jerry R. Choate: Seventy-five years of mammalogy, 1919-1994. , Special Publication No. II The American Society of Mammalogists, 1994. pp. 46-48

Web links

• Literature by and about William B. Davis (zoologist) in the WorldCat bibliographic database